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In what has become an ugly pattern (1, 2) John Oliver’s show frets over vulgar language and remains silent about others who commit substantive crimes.

As recently as last week, Oliver decried Donald Trump endorsing war crimes—”When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.”. Two Republicans (one elected, one running for office) recently said vulgar and ignorant things:

I am the face of the Re-Pube-Licking Party.

I like boobies.—two posts from Robert Morrow, Chairman-elect, Travis County, on his Twitter feed posted 48 hours after being elected.

The dinosaurs on [Noah’s] ark may have been babies and not able to reproduce. It might make sense to take the small dinosaurs onto the ark instead of the ones bigger than a bus.—Mary Lou Bruner, Texas State Board of Education candidate speaking for herself on her Facebook page.

This week Oliver credited the national Republican party which distanced themselves from these two Republicans saying they would be insignificant (“[Bruner would be] a human rain delay”) and “Robert Morrow in no way speaks for the Republican Party of its values.” and then Oliver asked:

But doesn’t he though? Because in this election cycle it would be a lot easier to argue that your party shouldn’t be judged by people who spread weird Obama conspiracy theories and brag about their dicks if that didn’t also describe your presumptive nominee for the Presidency.

Which means we should feel free to evaluate the Democratic Party and its presumptive nominees for the Presidency (whose actions are rarely scrutinized on the show) by their choices. It’s not hard to do so as there isn’t that much to choose from.

The Democratic party isn’t opposed to tactless quips: Clinton’s response (a response CODEPINK describes as “sociopathic“) to the extrajudicial murder of Muammar Gaddafi, “We came, we saw, he died.” draws little examination then or now even though she was in power and on-duty when she said it in a televised interview. The Democratic Party apparently likes war (Sen. Clinton voted for the 2003 Iraq war), trashing water supplies in the name of big business commerce (Clinton doesn’t mind fracking), doing whatever they can to appease the HMOs and prevent universalizing the US’ extant single-payer healthcare delivery system (Clinton is a long-time backer of this in various guises dating back to her days as First Lady through her interviews where she insists universalizing Medicare is not possible), propping up dictators (Democrats and Republicans have done this for decades), and killing people (including Americans) in drone attacks justified with mere suspicion of wrongdoing (no published evidence, no public trial) as well as members of their families who are suspected of doing nothing wrong (Secretary of State Clinton participated in this).

“The Administration plans not to say how many innocents it thinks it killed in any strike—it will only offer a bland ‘aggregate assessment’ of innocent dead,” said Cori Crider, Reprieve attorney for drone strike victims. “Contrast this to last April, when the President named—and apologized—for the deaths of two innocent Westerners, Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto. To Yemenis and Pakistanis who live under US drones every day, the contrast could not be clearer.”

When matters are put this way these two parties look similarly horrific, neither uniquely worthy of scorn more than the other, neither deserving a lack of criticism.